


Questions and Answers

by alcego



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: M/M, Professor AU, ineffable husbands, outside pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-06
Updated: 2019-07-06
Packaged: 2020-06-23 14:33:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19703341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alcego/pseuds/alcego
Summary: Mr. Crowley is a professor. His students know just about everything about him, except for who his husband is. Cassandra, a student enrolled in both Mr. Crowley and Mr. Fell's classes at the same time, has a theory.





	Questions and Answers

**Author's Note:**

> just a little smth i spat out to ease along an existential crisis. not heavily edited nor critically thought out; just a fun thing to write, and a fun thing to read (hopefully) 
> 
> also, an experiment with footnotes

Nobody took Biology 1311 for the easy A, because getting an “easy A” in Biology 1311 was as likely as finding that our galaxy had split into three different, smaller galaxies overnight. No, they were more likely to take Biology 1311 for the professor, one Mr. A.J. Crowley. 

Mr. Crowley was witty in the same way that a sloth is fast: students have often found their attempts to send him on a tangent[1] thwarted by a roundabout string woven back into the subject material. This made for entertaining lectures, and many students have survived their hellish 8a.m. classes by exploring how far Mr. Crowley would have to reach to bring his latest tangent back around.

Of course, a witty professor with a tough but reasonable grading schedule would struggle to get the sort of demand Mr. Crowley achieved as a low-level professor with miraculous tenure. But Mr. Crowley was not any professor, and his lectures were peppered with loving references to his partner, whom Mr. Crowley affectionately referred to as _angel._

This brings us to the topic of Mr. Crowley’s partner, who has been the subject of much dispute in both the biology office and amongst Mr. Crowley’s alumni. Mr. Crowley’s angel was smart, eccentric, and soft, and his penchant for books had toed the line of decency so aggressively that the line had eventually given up and sidled as far away from his toe as it could reasonably do without sending all of reality into a fuss.

Not that Mr. Crowley’s students knew this. For all they knew, Mr. Crowley’s angel worked odd hours in an antique bookshop, because, they reasoned, how else would someone become so well acquainted with books of prophecy?

They had entirely neglected to think of the English Department.

Staffing the English Department were five stuffy professors, each of whom had an odd penchant for jackets with patches on the elbows and a vocabulary that burned with condescension. 

Naturally, students in the know flocked to the professor whose teaching methods left them feeling a bit baffled, but in a pleasant sort of way reminiscent of waking up from a dream, confident that you’ve learned something, but being unsure what exactly that something is.

Mr. A.Z. Fell was that professor. He looked sort of like a plump, cushioned couch and had hair so white that made students wonder how old he was, exactly, because no one with such a middle-aged face could have hair that white without copious amounts of hair dye involved.

Mr. Fell was anxious, with a tendency to ramble and stutter, and he was most beloved by his students. Well, beloved by those who didn’t make the mistake of eyeing his reading material too curiously[2], anyway.

Not one person at the college supposed that Mr. Fell was Mr. Crowley’s angel.

Part of this was due to Mr. Fell’s refusal to disclose any personal information whatsoever, aside from little morsels of information such as how he liked his cocoa and which authors he thought ought to try writing without a stick up their ass. 

That is, no one put two and two together until one enterprising student took both Biology 1311 and Literature 2312 at the same time[3]. This student, who we shall call Cassandra for ease, noticed similarities between Mr. Crowley’s angel and Mr. Fell while they procrastinated on their far more daunting Math 1311 homework.

Curious, Cassandra decided to test her hypothesis.

“Mr. Fell,” she asked, “are you married?”

Mr. Fell, quite unused to questions of this nature, spluttered and cawed and coughed before finding it in himself to swallow and nod and say, “Yes.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, quite happily.”

“What’s he like?” Cassandra asked, pushing the question a bit further.

“He’s a snake,” Mr. Fell said fondly.

That wasn’t the answer Cassandra had expected, but, upon further inspection, she realized that her theory had more to it than previously thought. Mr. Crowley didn’t saunter so much as he slithered[4], and his word-sounds had a habit of drawing out into guttural hisses and choked Noises.

That was interesting.

“Mr. Crowley,” Cassandra asked, “do you know Mr. Fell? From the English Department?”

Mr. Crowley lit up in the same way her grandmother lit up whenever her wife walked into the room. “Oh, yes,” Mr. Crowley said. “Known him for quite the while! Wouldn’t not know him for the world.”

Now, Cassandra was a bright young woman; she knew when to stop pushing. And, so far as she was concerned, now was the perfect time to let the issue go. After all, she was satisfied that she was correct, and Mr. Fell was so private that she thought he might have a heart attack if she asked him anything else.

Mr. Crowley, on the other hand, had no such reservations. He spent the last half of the lecture sharing fond anecdotes about Mr. Fell, many of which seemed so improbable that Cassandra began to wonder if she was off the mark after all, and if Mr. Crowley was just pulling her leg.

But Mr. Crowley was not; he eventually tied one of his stories back into the lecture, and the lesson concluded with the usual number of digressions, only one of which pertained to his angel.

More confused than she’d been at the start, Cassandra continued through the semester. Homework plagued her, and eventually drove her theory from mind. In the long run, it didn’t really matter if Mr. Crowley was married to Mr. Fell, but passing Math certainly did.

The thought was gone. In its wake was academic professionalism, or so Cassandra thought.

One day, Mr. Fell cancelled class.

He was sick or something, Cassandra was sure. Mostly, she didn’t mind, because she had a little more time to herself[5] and who didn’t need some personal time, in this day and age?

She got through Mr. Crowley’s class feeling a bit flustered, because Mr. Crowley was more distracted than usual, digressing and _ngk_ ing more than usual, and being altogether more _excitable_ than usual. Class ended, and Cassandra shuffled her books into her bag, yawned, and left the classroom.

And then stopped, because was that _Mr. Fell_ standing outside the door?

“Mr. Fell!” she yelped, because it was. “I thought you were sick?”

Mr. Fell wiggled uncomfortably. “No, my dear. Just, uh, temporarily unavailable.” His eyes brightened. “I have an event tonight.”

Huh?

Mr. Crowley sauntered through the door, glasses hiding his eyes but not the playful wag of his fingers as he shooed off someone with a question. “Aziraphale,” Mr. Crowley said grimly.

Oh dear. Cassandra must’ve been wrong; no way Mr. Crowley would greet his angel like _that_.

“Oh, come on now,” Mr. Fell said brightly, “it’s _crepes_. Just like Paris!”

“Wonderful.”

“You’ll like them,” Mr. Fell said confidently.

“I’m sure I will,” Mr. Crowley said, and the edge of his grimace flickered into something akin to a smile.

Maybe Cassandra had been right after all. “Well, Mr. Fell,” she said, loath to intrude on their moment, “have fun at your event!”

Mr. Crowley laughed. “ _Your_ event? Since when did our anniversary become your thing?”

“Since always,” Mr. Fell sniffed. Mr. Crowley raised an eyebrow, and Mr. Fell waved his hands wardingly. “Since Paris, anyway. And the crepes. It was such a pain getting you to show…”

“You didn’t have to stick your neck out to get me to show.”

“Maybe not, but it was the surest way to get you to lunch.”

Cassandra backed away, smiling to herself with the air of someone who’s just had their very specific inkling confirmed. It was a good thing she chose that moment to walk away; the last thing Cassandra needed was to realize her professors were discussing their lunch date from 1793.

**Author's Note:**

> 1Mr. Crowley’s lectures often found themselves strung out across semi-verbose spiels of debatable accuracy and indisputable blasphemy. One notable example includes the theological question, “Which came first? Heaven or Angels?” of which there has been no definite answer, as God is as inscrutable as They are ineffable.[return to text]
> 
> 2 Those students came to the harsh realization that the softest professor on staff was also a master of possessive behavior, and never made the mistake of asking after Mr. Fell’s books again.[return to text]
> 
> 3This was done with a dated form of magic that allowed the user to be in two places at once. Neither Mr. Crowley nor Mr. Fell picked up on the spell, as both were far more concerned with their lunchtime plans.[return to text]
> 
> 4Now that Cassandra was paying attention, she found herself worrying that Mr. Crowley’s hips were trying to escape the rest of Mr. Crowley’s bones.[return to text]
> 
> 5The particular spell Cassandra was using to be in two places at once was finnicky, and would continue until the end of the semester, when it was scheduled to finish. Cassandra quite literally had an extra hour to spend while Mr. Fell’s class was out.[return to text]


End file.
